Posts Tagged ‘privilege’

We hear that corporate tax rates, at 35% (federal), are too high and need to be reduced so U S companies can be competitive. I remain confident that the best way to fund public services is thru a tax on land value and other measures of privilege, but if any kind of corporate tax is to be retained, here are a few things to consider:

The statutory rate is 35%, but there are all kinds of credits and deductions a corporation can take, so typically the effective rate is much less. Here’s a U S Treasury report (pdf) claiming that effective corporate tax rates were 20% in 2011, the most recent year calculated. Major corporations have the ability to obtain special tax favors. (Just scan thru the tax code (big pdf) to find some of these special favors, available only to individual projects or corporations which reached specific milestones on specific combinations of dates.)

Enterprises in most countries, but not in the United States, have to pay a national value-added or sales tax. The rate and details of course varies by country, but is typically about 19% as indicated by this OECD spreadsheet. Scroll down to the second half of this article to get some more perspective from John Hussman.

Most U S states impose an additional corporate income tax, with varying rates and rules. Illinois takes 9.5%. I have no knowledge about other states nor subnational jurisdications outside the US. However, this table from Deloitte (pdf) provides some detail, including an assertion that the total national+local corporate tax rate in Germany is about 30-33%.

Some commentators complain about “double taxation” of corporate earnings, because corporate dividends are paid out of after-tax earnings. However, incorporation, with its perpetual life and limitation of liability, is a privilege, for which it’s reasonable to expect corporations to pay. I don’t suppose that taxable income is the best measure of the value of this privilege, perhaps a small percentage of total expenditures would be better, but certainly the appropriate fee is greater than zero. Furthermore, a considerable percentage of corporate stock is owned by various kinds of entities which do not pay tax, such as universities and other nonprofits, and Roth IRA’s.

After a couple of months’ diversions, I hope I am getting back to something like regular blogging, starting with a nice article — as far as it goes, at least– by Gregg Easterbrook about the subsidies and political favors governments provide for professional football. A lot of this, on stadium subsidies (not just for football), has been covered in the past by Heartland, most recently here (pdf). But Easterbrook covers some additional ground, noting the federal favors done for the football business. I hadn’t been aware that NFL has a special anti-trust exemption (I thought it was just one of the many many cases where feds choose not to enforce laws.) And I’d never made the connection between stadiums paid for by the public, and the “intellectual” “property” of football game images, which of course are government-created privilege.

Easterbrook does seem to be a football fan, which is a skill (affliction?) far beyond my capabilities. My preferred remedy for “sports” subsidies has always been for the audience to go away and do something else. But even tho I’m just as happy watching an amateur softball game, many people evidently get pleasure from seeing the professionals in action. Easterbrook suggests that it’s necessary that “public attitudes change.” Great idea, but as long as the public feel compelled to watch these games, it’s difficult to imagine any politician willing to risk the wrath of those who control them.

is subtitled “How it Moves and Why,” but this isn’t about the Kinetic Condos. It’s a response to a questions Georgists often hear: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” Different Georgists give different answers, including “I am rich.”

We know that the major cause of the business cycle is the capitalization and trading of government-protected privilege. This privilege can be any kind of income obtained without producing, and may flow from spectrum licenses, drilling rights, patents, copyrights, or a hundred other sources. But the main one is land ownership, since land is not a product of human labour.

When demand increases for a product or service, production can increase, but that isn’t true of privilege. The only limit on the price of privilege is what the market will bear without breaking. So can’t we measure that price, use the information to forecast economic meltdowns, and thus become wealthy?

Our massive government statistics operations, which know how much more Asian-American households spend on rice than the rest of us do (4 times as much, as of 2003), and that people spend an average of 2.43 hours each weekday watching television, know just about nothing about the price of land. Only a few countries maintain any such information (Korea, Japan, Denmark, and Australia come to mind). Many local authorities compile land assessments, but the relationship to actual market prices is, at best, elastic, and the information is not systematically reported. So indirect and ephemeral indicators must be relied upon.

Moreover, they land price cycle tends to run about 18 years, and may be disrupted by war (not by much else, it appears). This means that taking advantage of it requires a great deal of patience and, one can only say, a certain amount of faith. And starting at a young enough age, by the way. Of course the cycle might be entirely abolished, but that would require the elites, and some of the non-elites, to surrender significant privilege.

The book is well-written, well-edited, and well-documented. (A subject index would be nice.) Economist Mason Gaffney’s review is far more informed than anything I could have produced. He points out a number of imperfections, but on the whole this is a very useful book for anybody who wants to know why many of us aren’t rich, or who would like to be.

A new Civic Federation report shows vacant land in Chicago assessed at just 4.81% of market value– it’s supposed to be assessed at 22%. On this basis, vacant land in Chicago is worth $5.3 billion, and to assess (and tax) it properly would bring in over $50 million/year. If the County Board were to revise its classification ordinance to assess vacant land at 40% of value (to go any higher would have other repercussions), another $40 million or more would be recovered.

In the suburbs, the underassessment is less severe, but vacant land there is estimated to be worth over $4.6 billion, so some additional revenue could be realized.

And or course, no matter how high the taxes on vacant land are raised, nobody’s going to move it away or decide not to use it because of the tax on it.

A letter to this effect was sent to the Tribune this afternoon. I am sure they will instantly recognize it as a perceptive and cogent statement, and will publish it under a prominent headline. Uh, right?

UPDATE Nov 6: The Tribune did publish the letter, though not formatted quite as I wished. Two days later they also included on their web page (but not in print) my suggestion (about halfway down here) for transit funding from land value.